Greene - an important
Irish
family
The name
Greene
According to the Corofin Heritage Centre: "The
Greene
surname was quite strong in Co.Clare during the last century
with
our Master Index of Baptisms recording just over 300 families
of the
name."
Dr. Edward McLysaght in his Book "Irish Families Their
Names
and Origins" (published in the late 1950s) gives the
following
account of the name:-
"O'Huoneen, McGlashan, Greene:-
Although Green is
one of the commonest indigenous surnames in England,
the majority
of those who hail from Connacht and west Munster (this
includes
Kilmacrehy) are native Irish in origin. There the name
is
almost always spelt with a final E. In Co. Clare where the name
is well
known, it is a synonym, by translation of the word uaithne
(green),
for O hUaithnin, formerly anglicised phonetically
as Huneen and
Houneen. This is a genuinely Dalcassian family...
Daniel O Huonyn of the
family of Greenes of County Clare became
an admiral of the Spanish
Navy." Ida Grehan, however, in
Dictionary of Irish Family Names says
"there are few really
outstanding Greens...".
In a map of
Ireland, McLysaght shows the name O Honeen near Doolin
- several miles
north of Ballycotton,
home of our supposed
ancestral family. In a related book, McLysaght
says "the good old
Clare name of O'Honeen, or O Huonyn as
it was formerly spelled, was...
almost extinct... the English
name Greene was
substituted..."
A similar account is given by John Grenham,
("Clans and
Families of Ireland", 1993), of the name
Greene: "used
as the anglicised version of a wide variety of
Irish names containing
uaithne, 'green', or glas,
'grey-green' In Co. Clare
(the origin from Ó hUaithnigh was)
more rarely anglicised
as 'Hooneen' and 'Huneen'." Another account
explains uaithne
as denoting things dyed green, while glas is
green by nature.
Other derivations of O hUaithnin are Hooney in
County Cork
and McGlashan in Ulster.
Greene in Irish families
and maps
The name 'O Honeen', in Clare, is listed as one of the
important
families of Ireland.
Mentioned in
- 'Principal families
in Ireland from 11th to end of 16th century'
(46 names listed for Clare)
and
- 'Important families in Ireland who possessed that kingdom at
the
beginning of the 17th century' (18 listed for Clare), (both
lists published
in John O'Hart's 'Irish Pedigrees' 1892).
The Greenes, however, may be
important, but they are not 'great'.
A map of great families in the 14th
century shows only O Brien
and MacNamara in Clare (no Greene or
Honeen).
An 'Irish Ancestral Map', undated, shows 50 names in
Clare,
including Honeen, O'Neylan and Mulqueen (Hynes in Galway). There
are
no Honeens in any other area in Ireland, and no Greenes at
all (Murphy and
Walsh, by comparison, are common to several counties
of Ireland). The most
common names in Clare are MacNamara, MacMahon,
Moloney, OBrien, McInerney,
Kelly, Keane, Murphy, Halloran, Ryan,
Lynch, OConnor, and
Hogan.
Coat of arms
Grenham
depicts a gemstone carved with the Greene family arms
(shown left)
three stags on a shield, surmounted by a larger
stag. The stag, he says,
appearing in the arms of many Munster
families, relates very clearly to the
kinship myth of the Érainn
peoples. In this myth, the
legitimacy of the ruling house is confirmed
when a stag enters. What the
many families displaying the stag
have in common is that they were
originally part of the great
Eoghanacht tribal grouping which
dominated Munster until
the time of Brian Boru. (p. 73, op.
cit.)